Major abdominal surgery for a number of diseases involving different parts of the gastro-intestinal and urinary tract can result in a patient being left with an abdominal stoma. The three most common types of abdominal stoma are the colostomy, the ileostomy, and the ileal conduit. In the case of an ileostomy, ileal conduit, and many colostomy operations, the patient is unable to control the passage of bodily waste material and must rely upon an appliance attached to their body to collect this material.
Numerous appliances have been proposed for this purpose. Most can be characterized as either a one-piece or a two-piece system. The one-piece appliance conventionally consists of a pouch having an opening in one sidewall for the stoma around which a plastic faceplate is permanently bonded. The faceplate includes an outer layer of adhesive material which is designed to affix the appliance directly to the body or to an intermediate skin barrier or sealing washer. The two-piece appliance conventionally consists of a mounting ring that is supported on the body by means of an elastic belt.
Recently, the two-piece appliance disclosed by Steer et al. in British Patent No. 1,571,657 and U.S. Ser. No. 881,274, now abandoned in favor of Ser. No. 394,659 filed on July 2, 1982, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,460,363, has achieved considerable commercial success. The Steer et al. appliance consists of a skin barrier having a projecting rib type coupling member affixed to its outer surface and a pouch with a channel shaped coupling member encircling the stoma opening in the pouch sidewall. The pouch can be securely attached to the skin barrier by snapping onto the rib. The skin barrier employed by Steer et al. is that described by Chen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,339,546 and includes an adhesive layer consisting of a mixture of gelatin, pectin, sodium carboxymethylcellulose, and polyisobutylene and an outer water insoluble polyethylene film to which the rib coupling member is affixed.